Thinned Mountain Ash Forest Recovered Its Carbon in 30 Years and Brought Back an Endangered Possum

A long forgotten forestry experiment in Victoria, Australia is back in the spotlight after researchers returned to plots that were heavily thinned in 1987. The 30 year re-measurement found that mountain ash trees in those thinned stands grew about 20% larger in diameter than unharvested controls, recovered all the carbon removed in the original harvest, and matched or exceeded the carbon stored in untouched forest. Camera traps also detected the critically endangered Leadbeater's possum in every treated plot surveyed, but not in any unharvested control area. The study, published in Forest Science, comes from a single site and a single eucalypt species, so it is not a blanket endorsement of heavy thinning. Still, it gives carbon market developers and land managers a rare real world dataset showing how active forest management can support both carbon recovery and habitat. For anyone working on nature based climate solutions, this is the kind of evidence worth following.